diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29
diff --git a/cmd/gvncli/main.go b/cmd/gvncli/main.go
index 9102011..ffe1adb 100644
--- a/cmd/gvncli/main.go
+++ b/cmd/gvncli/main.go
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ package main
 import (
 	"os"
 
+	"github.com/lightninglabs/governator"
 	"github.com/urfave/cli"
 )
 
@@ -15,6 +16,7 @@ func main() {
 	app := cli.NewApp()
 	app.Name = "gvncli"
 	app.Usage = "command line tool for governator"
+	app.Version = governator.Version()
 	app.Flags = []cli.Flag{
 		cli.StringFlag{
 			Name:  "rpcserver",
diff --git a/version.go b/version.go
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41b4df0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/version.go
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+// Copyright (c) 2013-2017 The btcsuite developers
+// Copyright (c) 2015-2016 The Decred developers
+// Heavily inspired by https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd/blob/master/version.go
+// Copyright (C) 2015-2020 The Lightning Network Developers
+
+package governator
+
+import (
+	"bytes"
+	"fmt"
+	"strings"
+)
+
+// Commit stores the current commit hash of this build, this should be set using
+// the -ldflags during compilation.
+var Commit string
+
+// semanticAlphabet is a list of all allowed characters that can be used in the
+// appPreRelease part.
+const semanticAlphabet = "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz-"
+
+// These constants define the application version and follow the semantic
+// versioning 2.0.0 spec (http://semver.org/).
+const (
+	appMajor uint = 0
+	appMinor uint = 1
+	appPatch uint = 0
+
+	// appPreRelease MUST only contain characters from semanticAlphabet
+	// per the semantic versioning spec.
+	appPreRelease = "alpha"
+)
+
+// Version returns the application version as a properly formed string per the
+// semantic versioning 2.0.0 spec (http://semver.org/).
+func Version() string {
+	// Start with the major, minor, and patch versions.
+	version := fmt.Sprintf("%d.%d.%d", appMajor, appMinor, appPatch)
+
+	// Append pre-release version if there is one.  The hyphen called for
+	// by the semantic versioning spec is automatically appended and should
+	// not be contained in the pre-release string.  The pre-release version
+	// is not appended if it contains invalid characters.
+	preRelease := normalizeVerString(appPreRelease)
+	if preRelease != "" {
+		version = fmt.Sprintf("%s-%s", version, preRelease)
+	}
+
+	// Append commit hash of current build to version.
+	version = fmt.Sprintf("%s commit=%s", version, Commit)
+
+	return version
+}
+
+// normalizeVerString returns the passed string stripped of all characters which
+// are not valid according to the semantic versioning guidelines for pre-release
+// version and build metadata strings.  In particular they MUST only contain
+// characters in semanticAlphabet.
+func normalizeVerString(str string) string {
+	var result bytes.Buffer
+	for _, r := range str {
+		if strings.ContainsRune(semanticAlphabet, r) {
+			result.WriteRune(r)
+		}
+	}
+	return result.String()
+}